Nado kakaru nageki wa shigesa masaritsutsu hito nomi kakaru yado to naruramu

English Translation

Why is it that these
sighs, like thrown wood, thicken here
and thicken always,
until this becomes a house
that people only leave?

Meaning

Why should these sighs grow thicker and thicker, like wood cast down, until this becomes a house that people only leave?

Commentary

8 The Peach Festival and the Parting from Her Sister

The year turned and the third month came. Peach blossoms and the rest had no doubt been made ready, but though she waited, Kaneie did not appear; and the other lady, who was usually never away from her side, did not come that day either. On the morning of the fourth they all appeared together, and saying that the things she had waited over since the night before were better used than left, they brought out this and that. When the flowers she had prepared with such care were broken off and set out from within, there was written on them, in the hand of one who could not keep her composure, a poem jotted down as if in idle practice. Kaneie, seeing her try to hide it, snatched it up and made his reply. The other lady, hearing this, put into a poem of her own the reason she had stayed away. From this time Kaneie made no secret of his visits to the woman of Machi no Kōji, going openly and on purpose. Once there had been at least some care not to rouse the author's suspicions; now there was nothing to be done, and it was wretched. Moreover, while she was still watching the other lady come and go, they said it was time she moved somewhere easier, and took her away. The author, left behind, felt lonelier still, and the thought that she would hardly see her face again made her truly sad, so that as the carriage was drawn up she sent her a poem. It was the man who answered.
Kaneie was the third son of Fujiwara no Morosuke and at this time Assistant Commander of the Right Guards; he would rise to be regent and chancellor. The author was a daughter of Fujiwara no Tomoyasu. The other lady is a sister of the author, whom the text names by that designation alone. The woman of Machi no Kōji likewise appears under that name only, her family never disclosed.
It is the day in the tenth year of Tenryaku when the other lady moved away, and the place is the carriage porch of the author's dwelling.
The other lady was taken off to what they called an easier place, and as the carriage was drawn up, the author sent this poem, thinking how hard it would now be even to see her face.
The reply came not from the departing lady but from the man, who wrote "Omou chō waga koto no ha o adabito no shigeru nageki ni soete uramu na." After this the author's days become a matter of lying down and rising alone, and the account moves on to "Soko ni sae karu to iu naru makomogusa ikanaru sawa ni ne o todomuramu."

The opening raises the poem as a question: why should it be like this? The word for sighing in the second line also means wood cast down, and by that double sense the word for thickness comes to describe the growth of trees, so that the garden's thicket and the grief of the heart are laid over one another. The third line means increasing as it goes, the sighs deepening year by year. The fourth means a place people only depart from, pointing to a house from which Kaneie's visits have receded and from which now even the other lady is being taken. The close is conjectural: why should it become such a house? The pivot word turns the scene of a garden running wild directly into a scene of the heart, and this is an early instance of a manner that recurs throughout the diary, in which a house falling into ruin and a marriage falling into ruin are made one image.

Author

The Mother of Fujiwara no Michitsuna

Source

Kagero Nikki

Other